(Photo Courtesy of Desmond Fischer/ Xavier News Wire)
On Saturday afternoon at the Cintas Center, Xavier gave their best performance of the young 2019-20 Basketball season.
Between having 10 players score, four players in double digits, and 33 bench points Xavier got their offense on a roll they have yet to see so far this season. Xavier also got a nice shot in the arm behind the debut of freshman guard Kyky Tandy. Although Tandy scored just five points in the game, he also had two huge assists including finding fellow freshman Zach Freemantle on a full court pass for a big layup. Tandy also made his first career shot attempt at Xavier with a deep 3 from the logo at Cintas Center.
While Tandy gave a nice spark in his debut, the OG's as some would say kept things rolling as they have all season. Tyrique Jones had another double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds, Paul Scruggs had 15 points and six assists and Naji Marshall had 13 points including a big 9-0 scoring run by himself in the middle of the second half.
Defensively the Musketeers were dominant as well. As a team Xavier forced 10 steals and blocked five shots. The physicality of the Musketeers took over the game and Lipscomb wasn't able to get their footing as a team.
K.J. Johnson had 25 points for Lipscomb on 9/17 shooting and Ahsan Asadullah had 18 but the rest of the team wasn't able to make anything happen with Andrew Fleming being the third leading scorer in the game scoring just nine points. Lipscomb had zero bench points in the game.
Xavier now stands at 7-1 with just one more game before the Crosstown Shootout next Saturday, December 7th. The Musketeers will host Green Bay on Wednesday who is 2-4 on the season. According to KenPom Green Bay is ranked 322nd in the country on defense. Tip off is at 7:00 PM EST and will be shown of FS2.
